Author: Rasmus

While looking for a new job, I found myself missing the structure that getting up and going to work brings. So I imposed some structure on myself. Unless I have an in-person interview, or some other event, this has now become my daily routine.

Every morning, I get up and have coffee with my wife, before she goes to work. This gets me an early start, and prevents me from slipping into a nocturnal lifestyle.

After she leaves, I spend the morning hours split between bettering myself, searching for or directly applying for jobs.

Then, after lunch, I turn to stream video games! Going live on camera (almost) every day, helps keep me accountable to others – my (perceived) audience – and adds to the feeling of having a routine. A regular session typically lasts one hour.

I just finished the first series, a 20 session stream of Cities: Skylines. If you have that much time to spare, you can watch it all on Twitch or YouTube (or below).

After gaming, I turn my attention to work around the house and personal projects, like the Stratocaster, I am rebuilding. More on that in a later post.

This self-imposed routine has helped me stay both productive and sane. It keeps me on task, it keeps me accountable, and it makes me remember to have some fun along the way. So, I thought I’d share this little unemployment hack with anyone else out there, who might be in a similar situation. Of course, you can substitute streaming with anything else involving other people, the trick lies in the accountability and how easy it is to do (I don’t even have to leave the house).

Celebrate the little victories. Sounds kind of corny, doesn’t it? Perhaps it does, but nevertheless it is something myself and my better half have been reminding each other of, when we’ve gone through rough patches, where Life doesn’t line up with expectations. Those times where it is easy to fall into a pattern of negative thinking, which affects happiness, productivity, sex drive and almost every other aspect of existing. It sucks, as you probably already know.

All of us experience tough times, maybe after losing a job or a loved one, or dealing with illness – experiencing adversity is just part of Life. There are countless ways Life can try to fuck you over, and if you let it, negativity can spiral out of control and suck ever more parts of previously mentioned existence down the drain. If you’re caught in a negative thought pattern, you have to fight back.

This is where celebrating the little victories come in handy. It’s not so much about high fives or actual celebration (those are fine too), it’s about being observant of the positive things surrounding you. By consciously observing the positive, I open myself up to seeing even more positive things, thus training myself to focus on a positive thought pattern, rather than a negative one. Instead of expecting to lose, I am reminded, that sometimes you win. This is why I like to celebrate the little victories.

What exactly constitutes a “little victory”? It can be whatever, really. Maybe you got the perfect parking spot, or got a thank you note from a client, maybe your dog finally rolled over on command, or you passed that level in your favorite video game. As I said, it’s about looking for something positive, so if you recognize it as such, you can count it.

In our household, we sometimes have exchanges that go along the lines of “I hit the perfect level of cream in my coffee this morning, it was so good.”, which is answered with a “Sometimes you win”. It has become a ritual, pointing out these tiny moments, and even when Life isn’t particularly tough, and things are just chugging along, observing little victories is a habit I never tire of.

Try it yourself, and see how many little victories you can recognize in a day. What little victories have you had today?

I like to set challenges for myself. Self-imposed, often timed challenges is a great way to learn new things, or experiment with different ideas. I find that it’s a great way to learn new concepts or test theories you might have; set yourself a challenge, and try to overcome it.

So, on a lazy Sunday, instead of playing video games, I challenged myself to make a platform game myself. Right away, I knew I wanted it to have an infinite number of procedurally generated levels, so you could never run out of new challenges. To make it more difficult for myself, I was not allowed to use any third party artwork or sound, everything had to be made for this challenge (no using scraps from the personal archives), and to top it off, I only allowed myself one day to complete it.That was pretty much my entire Sunday, but worth every second of it.

The screenshot is from the resulting game – Procformer Infinite – which you can play yourself, right here!

Challenge completed. Next! Perhaps improving or expanding the game with more features and obstacles? You never know what might happen on any given Sunday.